New Logics of Organizing

Chapter 11: Working with Integrity

The text outlines that the underlying logic of organizing has changed. No longer can organizing be taken for granted or hierarchies be seen as natural. Empowerment must be taken into account. Nowadays there is a great need within organizations to understand how changes in diversity have created the need for new communications strategies. With a new flatter global economy and work teams that may be seperated by oceans and cultures, companies have had to evolve their strategies and change the way they organize.

Ian Lennie aruges that organizing management favorably compares to poetry. Like poetry, management needs to be organized less by literal language and rationality and more by story and metaphor.

I believe that this part of the chapter is significant because it offers a clear view of how the changing dynamics of the world have created the need to change the way we think. Interpretation here is key. Organizations must be aware that cultural differences and the changing deemographics of the work world have brought new interpretations beyond the classic organization as machine model. Modern managers must be aware of how relationships, issues, and challenges change interpretations within the office.

Strategic Alignment

Chapter 10: Organizational Alignment

Strategic alignment is when companies or organizations modify their processes, hierarchies, trainings, or reward systems to better suit their new competitive strategies. It is necessary for a company to pursue strategic alignment in order to convince the public, inside and out, that their changes are organizational-wide and represent a new "way of doing things" within the company. An organization can communicate their message on only a superficial level unless effective changes are made. Without strategic alignment, an organization's attempt to convince customers or members of their new emphasis on service may fall on deaf ears when human resources does not return calls to employees or customer service remains inadequately staffed.

My experience with strategic alignment has been almost exclusively within political campaigns. Ineffective press outreach and plodding field campaigns have been the most obvious reasons for campaigns to hire new staff, argue that they are changing the scope and direction, and putting out a press blitz to highlight their strategic alignment. This has normally followed complaints from "political insiders" who feel that they have no had enough say in the campaign's structure or direction. These strategic alignments have mostly caused changes in strategy, staffing, and structure leading outside figures to believe that major shakeups have created a new vision for a struggling campaign.

Habits of Mind

Chapter 9: Communicating Leadership

According to the text, habits of mind are "patterned ways of thinking that define how a person approaches issues and conceives alternative ways of resolving or dealing with them." This can be a tough concept to interpret but Robert Quinn does a good job at simplifying it. Simply put, a leader should be mentally and emotionally flexible. In his research he has found that the strongest leaders do not copy other styles yet are flexible enough to take in "outside signals or stimuli" and are able to adapt to changes. Once managers' are able to get past their comfort zones and begin to be results driven according to Quinn they can begin to "perform and communicate as a leader."

I don't think there is any doubt that the most effective leaders in an organizational setting are those that remain flexible. Effective leaders have a unique style but are also open to new ideas. If necessary they can leave their comfort zones in order to implement new methods of increasing productivity or improving morale. A great leader must have the patience to "suspend" and be able to sit back and analyze a problem. Avoiding the knee jerk reactions marks the great leader from the normal middle manager. An effective manager sees the proverbial forest from the trees and understands that reaching most organization-wide goals takes time and energy.

Models of Democracy

Democracy & Dialogue Web Lecture

The web lecture lays out the different models of democracy. The procedural model consists of the basic fundamental rights necessary for any functional democracy. A competitive model has candidates vying for votes against each other to hold public office. The participatory model brings the people into it a common example being the town hall style meeting. Deliberative democracy is a model based on rational debate while the dialogic model recognizes the importance of people's emotions. Each model has their own weaknesses as on their own they can all result in serious difficulties for a functioning democracy.

Each of these models can be used in order to create a more democratic and open workplace. As in the real world these models can also lead to significant issues. Creating a participatory organization may make your employees or members feel more involved or of a greater use but it also can slow down the work process and hurt producitivity. A dialogic model may humanize and otherwise mechanical and coldly rational organization but there are serious issues with bringing to much emotion into an orgazination; this may lead to hurt feelings or a clouding of the organization's original goals. In my experience these models work much like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. It is not necessarily and evolution of ideas but a working towards an ultimate goal of including all of the models together as seemlessly as possible. A workplace or organization that can involve small pieces of each model is more likely to have a functioning democracy of ideas and a truly open system for communication.

Democracy in the Workplace

Chapter 8: Teams and Networks

Stan Deetz's multiple stakeholder model is concerned with creating a democratic dialogue within organizations pushing them to listen to the concerns not just of shareholders or members of the board but all levels of staff and even the community. With this theory Deetz is attempting to create a model in which organizations will take heed that their decisions can impact the community and the world at large and try to think about these concerns when performing their service. By creating a workplace of owners, integrating management with work, distributing information throughout the organization, and facilitating a social structure from the bottom, Deetz believes organizations can become more democratic and town-hall like.

Reading about Deetz's theory I was most intrigued by how the diffusing of information horizontally across an organization can make it more open and democratic. We live in the information age, like never before the standard "information is power" rings especially true. As with a diffusing of power, information that is spread throughout the organization is a form of empowerment. Employees that are allowed into the decision making process and feel just as important and included as management make for better workers. In Deetz's model, empowerment of one's employees is the key to a healthy democratic and service conscious organization.

Organizing Difference in Organizations

Chapter 7: Identity and Difference in Organizational Life

Further defining how organizations can control and mold their members identities the book describes several practices such as directly defining, defining a person by defining others, providing for a specific vocabulary, explicating morals, knowledge and skills, group categorization, hierarchical location, making a distinct set of rules, and defining the context. Identities are created through things as different as simply being promoted to management, having a reputation for working well with others, or just having a nice office location. Through these things members of an organization will communicate differently with their peers or superiors.

By promoting hard working staff, moving offices, or forcing people to work in cohesive units an office helps to create and facilitate new identities. These attempts are not always successful and can result in some push back by the organization's members. Members may believe that they are more productive or better communicators than their superiors which can ultimately cause an organization-wide identity crisis. In the majority of places I have worked at this has become an issue. When members of the organization are promoted that are deemed by their peers to be undeserving or even worse manipulative and scheming, the result is a drastic loss in morale and the need for a reaffirmation of the organization's goals by management. It has been my experience that while an organization needs to be proactive in creating identities that are not based upon things like gender, race, or class it can go to far and stifle individuality or even just fail to identify the right people to raise up.

Virtual or Real Communication?

Technology & Teams Online Lecture

Where is the line drawn between real and virtual communication? Is there even truly a difference between the two? These are the questions our online lecture this week presents to us. Being able to manage your relationships, either of a work or personal variety, creates an overlap between the supposed virtual and real worlds that blurs any line that may or may not exist. Essentially if teenagers are using the “virtual” world to “begin, maintain, and end” romantic relationships then there can be no real line between the two forms of communication.

Most romantic relationships that I have noticed among people my age have one foot in the virtual world and one foot in the real world. I rely extensively on instant messaging and text messaging with my girlfriend since we are both often too busy to be able to see each other on a daily basis. Instead of being able to have that time at home with each other we supplement our personal time by communicating through a medium that is hardly of a virtual nature for us. When I was organizing the medium I used almost exclusively was email in order to coordinate between different affiliates in order to meet project goals. No longer was face to face contact necessary, through our communication technologies we used email to facilitate contact, organize and set goals, and make timelines in order to get our organizing drives off the ground. I argue that there is no longer any need to argue between what’s real and virtual, much like the online lecture proposes the line has become so blurred as to be rendered meaningless.

Living in a Pervasive Communication Environment

Technology & Teams Online Lecture

The online lecture details the new age of pervasive communication we have entered. An era in which global communication is the key to a successful organization and constant contact with employees is the key to efficiency and speed. The boundaries between work, play, and rest have been whittled down; all aspects of life are subject to the demands that come alongside pervasive communication. While you can now coordinate your social life through facebook via your mobile phone you are also subjected the barrage of emails that often come after normal work hours. The pervasiveness of communication is unprecedented but it is hardly the beginning of a brave new world, there are still many changes that need to be made to make communication truly global. Much of the undeveloped world still has yet to take full advantage of literacy gains from the printing press, an invention created over 500 years ago.

As human beings we tend to be short sighted, whether looking to the past or the future, about where we stand in relation to both. When it comes to communication, though we obviously live in an unprecedented time in which we can communicate across oceans and boundaries, we still cannot imagine the effect that the printing press would have had upon the old world. The creation of the movable metal type by Johannes Gutenberg in 1450 essentially opened up a world that had been lost for nearly 1500 years. Before this books had been painstaking hand written by a handful of learned men and distributed thusly. The printing press opened the door to universal literacy, something we still have not reached obviously, but also to the work of the ancient Greeks and Romans which inspired the Renaissance and eventually the enlightenment, leading the to the art, music, culture, languages, and systems of government we have today.

Critical Approaches to Organizations

Metaphors and Cultures Web Lecture

In Critical Approaches to Organizations “researchers are interested in how domination is legitimized as normal and power relationships are accepted without question by organization members.” It is stated goal of these critical researchers to free the workplace of domination by management or the top of corporate hierarchy. The Domination Metaphor looks at how an organization’s actions can sometimes destroy the communities they reside in. The example brought up in the online lecture is that of Roger and Me, Michael Moore’s documentary about the closing of the General Motors plant in Flint, Michigan and the subsequent economic devastation it wrought.

The most frequent critique of Critical Approaches is just that; it is too critical of corporations and sees them only as tools of oppression, ignoring the technological advances gained through their commitment to research and progress. I believe this is a one sided view of critical approaches. While apologists for corporate greed argue that scholars wish to demonize their profit-centric approach, critical approach researchers wish only to expand dialogue from intra-managerial to intra-corporation. Involving lower level workers in the decision making process is a way of making sure that domination is not pervasive in the organization. Involving lower level workers can also mean that the community is more intimately involved in decisions that directly affect them, as these workers will normally work in the immediate area in which they reside.

Organizations as Cultures

Metaphors and Cultures Web Lecture

In the interpretive view of organizational culture a researcher studying an office’s communication will look how organizational life is developed through communication. Facets of the organizations culture may not be shared by all employees but there are overarching stories and values that flow throughout the organization. A researcher using the interpretive view aims to interpret communication in order to accurately define the culture of the organization. The online lecture ends the discussion of organizations as cultures with the criticism that ignores the role of power within organizations when it comes to developing metaphors and communications.

In my experience the development of workplace metaphors and stories is shared between management and lower level staff. While power certainly comes into play, a manager is much more likely to be able to pass along official communications or change a facet of office culture; staff has just as large of a role in expanding these metaphors and stories. The power in this sense is shared. Though developing official messages or metaphors such as the office as a family is often the realm of management, staff takes a large role in determining whether a change in workplace mores actually sticks. So while I agree that the interpretive view does seem to give management too little credit in office communication and its development, it gives the majority of employees just the right amount of credit in their role shaping and expanding the metaphors and changes in office culture that come from the top.

Critical Approach to Organizational Communication and "People against Profits"

Chapter 6: Critical Approaches to Organizations and Communication

(I promise this will be the most overtly political blog I write for this class.)

“The critical approach to organizational communication seeks to advocate for the interests of working people rather than the interests of corporate leaders and shareholders typically favored by management theory and practice.”

With the exception of those who hold government jobs or engage regularly in collective bargaining our hold on employment is tenuous at best. We are not guaranteed a next day’s wage without that next day’s labor. Do the CEO’s, members of the board, and top level executives of the company’s we work for ever make this same rationalization? That is highly doubtful.

The argument that a critical approach to the concerns of average employees pits “people against profits” is absolutely absurd. The more we learn about the general nature of the economy the more we realize that trickle down economics, supply side economics, voodoo economics etc…was just another way of rolling back the gains made by working families during the New and Fair Deals and further destroying our regulatory system; a fact which has had dire consequences for the health and fairness of American industry.

Ultimately, we all realize that a corporation’s main intent is to maximize profits. The shareholders who have invested well and the CEOs who have effectively steered the course should be rewarded for their individual achievements in business. The critical approach seeks only to look at the concerns of the average worker alongside those of the board or executive division; profit AND people.

Cultural Elements

Chapter 5: Cultural Studies of Organizations and Communication

Scholars attempting to study an organization’s culture normally begin with a detailed analysis of the cultural elements within the office. According to the author’s cultural elements include metaphors, rituals, stories, artifacts, heroes and heroines, performances, and values. Defining these cultural elements within the organization and analyzing them will give the researcher a great place to start when they attempt to transform the culture of the institution.

Reading over the various cultural elements I thought about my first fulltime job at a hotel in which I had some organizational influence in directing a small team of front desk employees. I was struck by how these elements particularly the metaphors, heroes and heroines, and values are unique to each organization yet can be disastrous if they hold negative connotations. At this hotel we used complicated software that was unintuitive and took new employees nearly a month to learn. It seemed to me to be holding new employees back and as an organization with such high turnover (yearly at about 80%) I felt that it would be more cost effective and in the best interests of the company to upgrade to a newer more intuitive model. This hotel had been run nearly the same for the past 25 years and I quickly realized that any suggestion at improving technology or shifting resources was considered anathema to the organization’s cultural values. Consistency and self reliance were valued above all other values and as such a leap forward in technology especially to ease the transition for new employees was consistently shot down.

Interdependence and the Tragedy of the Commons

Chapter 4: The Systems Perspective on Organizations and Communication

The oft-maligned theory on the "Tragedy of the Commons" by Hardin holds especially true for our purposes in organizational communication. I have written in comments that it is nearly impossible to avoid (and for many reasons we should embrace) a division of labor in the workplace but as with most things, with highly divided labor there comes a price. As the author's of our textbook suggest, with highly divided labor comes the clouding of perceptions regarding the "interdependent nature of their work." I have argued that workers who have shown the capacity for quality work should be given more responsibility and relative autonomy but it is also just as necessary to be able to reign this autonomy in when it conflicts with the overall goals and general communal nature of the office or workplace. It is of the utmost importance to communicate to employees the interdependent nature of their work; their is no factory without the venture capital to build it, no assembly line without the researcher who designed the product, and no product to market without the employees who work the line. By constructing an atmosphere in which people understand their the interdependent nature of their tasks but also retain relative autonomy you can avoid the "Tragedy of the Commons" but also continue to respect the individuality and independence of your employees.

McGregor's Theory Y Management

Chapter 3: Three Early Perspectives on Organizations and Communication

In attempting to define a new theory in contrast to "Theory X" or what he referred to as the "control-oriented, bureaucratic style of management" Douglass McGregor created Theory Y. Theory Y suggests that several things of note, especially that the expenditure of effort is just as natural in work as it is play and that "the average human being learns, under proper conditions, not only to accept but [also] to seek responsibility." In direct contrast with Theory X or the theory of classical management, McGregor sets his theory on the principle that people will actually seek responsibility when they are included in the decision making process and feel that their jobs are meaningful. Imagination is the key to inspiration and in this case, the key to keeping one's employees happy and hard working. What actually stands about McGregor's work is that he opens the door to the employee having a high degree of autonomy compared to other management theories. The independent, autonomous, thinking employee according to McGregor is the most inspired one. In my own experience I have found Theory Y to be basically true. Reasonably rational and intelligent employees should be rewarded with relative autonomy. This signifies a degree of respect between employer and employee and lets staff know that responsibility and autonomy is rewarded based upon merit.

Google's Goals

Chapter 4: The Systems Perspective on Organizations and Communication

“Google has as its corporate mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessibly and useful”

“Don’t be evil”

“big, hairy, audacious goals for the organization that are clearly articulated and broadly shared distinguish successful and enduring organizations from their less effective competitors”

Admittedly I am no expert on Google but I do believe I have something to add in regards to the company’s ethos. The book describes the nature of goals from an open-systems perspective as heavily influence by their environment and as resulting from negotiations between interdependent fractions within the organization. I can think of no other company that has been so successful in my lifetime while following an open systems communication approach quite like the information Goliath, Google. Seeking to compile the world’s knowledge into an arena in which anyone can attain access (at least anyone with enough resources to maintain access to the necessary technology) Google has created a mission statement that is purposefully vague yet promotes an incredibly dynamic message of interconnectedness. From the lowest systems analyst to the highest executive, the goal of promoting interconnectedness and following Google’s more informal slogan “don’t be evil” has proven to be incredibly effective and forming a cohesive platform between employees and departments that operate virtually independent of one another. Much like the Hippocratic oath which urges doctors to at the least do no harm, Google’s vague ultimate goal and catchy “don’t be evil” mantra has created a unity in mind among employees even where there seems to be no obvious overlap in duties. Google has perfectly captured the zeitgeist of the open systems movement.

The Human Relations Approach

Chapter 3: Three Early Perspectives on Organizations and Communication

In Chapter 3, I was especially struck by the significance of the human relations approach and the defining work of Mary Parker Follett. Follet stressed the importance of empowering workers to solve problems and accomplishing tasks. An effective manager will use communication and information as a mechanism for this empowerment. In making one's employees a part of the solution, an effective manager has organized a team capable of meeting and exceeding employment expectations. Involving all workers on such a personal level creates a more engaged and as such, a much more competent and effective team. Too often we ignore the personalities involved when communicating with team members or subordinates. It is incredibly important to make sure that the significance of the project, whether it be something as notable as a community organizing towards reducing blight or graffiti or something as simple as filing a quarterly sales report, is not lost upon one's employees or peers. In my experience it is the empowered worker that is always the most effective.

Salutations

Hello everybody,

My name is Gabriel (Gabe) Rodriguez and I am currently a graduate student in Public Administration at San Jose State University. I look forward to learning about organizational communication and applying it to my work in government and the non-profit sector.

I graduated with my B.A. in Political Science in Spring of 2007 and following receiving my degree went to work as an organizer at the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council. I joined the graduate program at State in Spring of 2008. This summer I will be hopefully spending my time not only in COMM 144 but also working at the Third Street Community Center and with the Strong Neighborhoods Initiative, both in San Jose.

Cheers,

Gabe